Meet The Top Women Investors In VC In 2017

Just six female investors have claimed spots on this year’s Midas List, up from five women a year ago. The list also has two female newcomers, Kirsten Green, founder of Forerunner Ventures, and Ann Miura-Ko, cofounder and partner at Floodgate Fund.

The Midas List, coproduced by Forbes with TrueBridge Capital Partners, ranks VCs on the number and size of exits over the past five years, with a premium on bolder early-stage deals. VCs in the top 10 averaged 10 deals involving companies with at least a $200 million acquisition or IPO, or a private valuation of more than $400 million. All 100 VCs averaged no less than nine of these deals.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker was once again Midas’ top-ranked woman VC, claiming the #6 spot, thanks to her shrewd bets on companies like Chinese commerce site
JD.com,
Instacart,
Slack, Spotify,
Facebook, Airbnb and Houzz. Meeker has also gained prominence in Silicon Valley for her anticipated annual spring Internet Trends report, which details where Meeker believes the tech world is heading.

Since top Kleiner partner John Doerr stepped away from the firm’s new funds, Meeker has taken on more responsibility and helps lead the team’s digital growth equity team, which focuses on surging Internet companies. Meeker first took the spot of the top female on Midas last year from GGV Capital’s Jenny Lee, who held the #10 rank in 2015.

The top woman Midas newcomer, Ann Miura-Ko, took the #77 rank thanks to her early investment in Lyft. Miura-Ko invested in the ride-sharing company when it had just five employees in Palo Alto and was still known as Zimride. She currently sits on the company’s board, a role that informs a class she teaches at Stanford called Prime Movers. The Palo Alto native saw another major success last year when
Microsoft acquired Xamarin, a maker of app-development tools, for nearly $500 million.

Miura-Ko first started Floodgate, which focuses on seed investments, as a cofounding partner in 2008. The next year, she completed a Ph.D. at Stanford University and had her second child. Miura-Ko once worked on algorithms for autonomous soccer-playing robots in college. She is passionate about science and engineering education and hosts a computer science camp at her house for three weeks every summer.

The second woman Midas newcomer is Kirsten Green, founder and partner at San Francisco-based Forerunner Ventures. Green secured the #98 rank thanks to scoring two of the biggest e-commerce exits in recent memory: Dollar Shave Club, a razor subscription service acquired by Unilever for $1 billion in July 2016, and e-commerce site Jet.com, which Walmart purchased for more than $3 billion a month later. Forerunner was the only VC firm to have invested in both. The retail-obsessed Green says the space isn’t slowing anytime soon. She’s currently expanding her all-female firm, which closed its third fund in 2016 and has invested in more than 40 startups.

The Returnees

The three other women Midas VCs are all list returnees: Rebecca Lynn, cofounder and partner at Canvas Ventures, Jenny Lee of GGV Capital and Theresia Gouw, cofounder and partner at Aspect Ventures.

Lynn rose to the #44 rank from a the #67 rank last year in part because she and her firm Canvas raised their second fund for $300 million in the second half of 2016. Canvas has used the fund to invest in startups such as Eden Technology Services, mentoring platform Everwise and Luminar Technologies, a LiDAR sensor maker that emerged from stealth this year. Lynn ranks in the upper half of the list in large part because of the 2014 IPO of Lending Club, a peer-to-peer lender. Lynn saw another key exit when FutureAdvisor was acquired by BlackRock for a reported $150 million in 2015.

Lee, who joined Chinese firm GGV twelve years ago, is another a standout returnee. Lee is one of the most respected VCs in China and took the #69 rank, down from #40 last year. Six of GGV’s portfolio companies were acquired in 2016 alone, including China Talent Group, a human resources services provider, game publisher Gamespedia and U51, a consumer credit loan rating shop. And two of her portfolio companies, 21Vianet and YY.com, went public in 2012.

The fourth woman VC returnee, Gouw of Aspect Ventures, is a six-time Midas lister. This year she took the #74 rank, an 18-spot jump from last year. Gouw focuses on software and security technology at Aspect, which she cofounded in 2014 with Jennifer Fonstad. At Aspect, Gouw aims to bridge the gap between angel investors and larger multi-stage VC firms. She invested early in real estate search engine Trulia, which went public in 2012, and more recently Cato Networks, which offers next-generation security services on demand, as well as ForeScout, a cybersecurity unicorn.

Gouw, a first-generation immigrant and engineer by training, has helped raise public awareness around issues related to diversity and innovation. In 2016, she gave a TEDx talk titled, “How Entrepreneurs Can Help the American Dream Get Its Mojo Back.”

A Grossly Male-Dominated Field

Midas’ six female VCs are important role models in an industry that’s stacked against women. Only about 5 to 8% of VC firm partners are female, according to a study by Columbia University researchers in May, a drop from 10% over the last decade. By comparison, about 27% of executive and senior-level managers at finance and insurance companies in the S&P 500 are female.

The Columbia study concluded that having more female decision-makers in the industry would improve VC firms’ returns and substantially boost funding opportunities for female entrepreneurs. More female VCs would not only lead to more culturally inclusive workplaces, they’d drive better business results too.

A study by Babson College in 2014 found that VC firms with women partners were more than twice as likely as firms without women partners to invest in companies with a woman on the management team or in the CEO role. Women still raise significantly less funding than male entrepreneurs. VCs invested $58.2 billion in companies with all-male founders in 2016, while women received just $1.46 billion in VC funding last year, according PitchBook. Women-led companies made up 4.94% of all VC deals last year, the highest percentage in the past decade.

I'm a San Francisco-based reporter on Forbes' tech team. I cover tech with an emphasis on the people, companies and innovations in the world of social and digital media. Before joining Forbes, I worked as a news writer and producer at The Wall Street Journal in New York. I h...